**Date:** 1905
**Source:** Lenin Miscellany, vol. 26
**Pages:** 216–217

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26646
AMENDMENTS TO A. BOGDANOV'S DRAFT RESOLUTION
"ON RELATIONS BETWEEN WORKERS AND INTELLECTUALS
IN THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTY"¹
[May 3 (April 20), 1905]

**On relations between workers and intellectuals in the Social-Democratic Party**

The Congress once again reminds conscious supporters of the workers' Social-Democratic party of their task: to strengthen by all means the party's bonds with the masses of the working class, raising ever broader strata of proletarians and semi-proletarians to full Social-Democratic consciousness, developing their revolutionary and Social-Democratic self-activity, taking care to have the working masses produce as large a number of workers as possible, capable of directing the movement and party organizations as members of local centers and the general party center; creating as many workers' organizations as possible within our party, striving to ensure that workers' organizations unwilling or unable to enter the party at least affiliate with it.

The Congress decisively condemns the attempts, which began in the era of economism and have been systematically repeated by the right wing of the party, to sow enmity and distrust between workers and intellectuals, [portraying our party organizations as purely intellectual, accusing them of striving to fetter the self-activity of the working class with party discipline, spreading empty phrases about the elective principle, mostly not even accompanied by attempts to realize it in practice.] — attempts to portray our party organizations as purely intellectual, a portrayal skillfully exploited by enemies of Social-Democracy, liberal bourgeois — attempts to accuse Social-Democratic organizations of striving to fetter the self-activity of the working class with party discipline, — attempts [to spread] to boast of the slogan of the elective principle mostly without serious steps toward its real implementation in practice. Full dominance of the elective principle, possible and necessary under free political conditions, is unattainable under autocracy. But even under autocracy, the application of the elective system would be possible on considerably broader scales than is now being done, if not for the obstacle posed by that Formal fuzziness of party organization and that actual disorganization of it, for which the party has precisely the right wing of Social-Democracy to thank. Undertaking a series of measures to eliminate this fuzziness and indefiniteness, the Third Congress strives to prepare conditions for the genuine implementation in party life of the elective principle to the extent possible, which will also be one of the most important tasks of the forthcoming congresses.

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¹ The draft was published in Bogdanov's article "The Organizational Question" in no. 13 of *Vpered* of April 5 (March 23), 1905. The headline of the article was written by Lenin. The article contains drafts of a statute and resolutions on the organizational question. The following lines were prefaced to the drafts: "The Bureau of the Majority Committees proposes to the Congress to appoint comrade Ivanov [pseudonym of A. A. Bogdanov. Ed.] as rapporteur on the organizational question. We present herewith for the information of the entire party the essence of his report."